Let’s be blunt: This is shaping up to be arguably the worst seven days for the Democratic Party and its media allies of our lifetimes.
It’s a DefCon 1 level of panic throughout the party as Democrats process that, if the presidential election were held today, Donald Trump would win in a landslide.
We all witnessed what happened Thursday night in Atlanta: A slack-jawed, oftentimes confused and incoherent President Biden hijacking the biggest night of this campaign season in the worst way possible.
Concern about the president’s age and mental acuity — or lack thereof — was already the No. 1 challenge facing his candidacy.
After Thursday night, there is no doubt in the minds of even the most hardcore Dems that this man should not be president for another four minutes, let alone another four years.
On Friday morning, all of The New York Times’ top columnists went on record with calls for Biden to step aside, as did its editorial board.
That’s significant, considering that this same publication hasn’t endorsed a Republican presidential candidate since Dwight D. Eisenhower back in 1956 — meaning it endorsed the likes of epic electoral losers Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis and John Kerry.
Dread was also palpable on CNN and MSNBC.
Moments after the debate ended, Van Jones on CNN openly called on Biden to exit the campaign, while MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, who reportedly speaks to the president on a regular basis, asked on air if any Fortune 500 company would ever consider hiring Biden as its CEO.
Remember, just weeks ago Scarborough declared Biden was sharper than any GOP House member he’s spoken to in the past 30 years.
One would think the avalanche of anguish would be so overwhelming that the Bidens would crumble and simply raise the white flag, but that ain’t happening.
“The last time Joe Biden lost The New York Times editorial board’s endorsement it turned out pretty well for him,” sniffed Biden campaign co-chair Cedric Richmond, still rankled by the Times’ endorsement of Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar — not Biden — in the 2020 Democratic primaries.
“The vociferousness and overlapping arguments from pundits and editorial pages were striking,” echoed Politico’s global editor-in-chief, John Harris — but “the notion of prominent commentators having wide sway over the national agenda is itself an artifact of an earlier era.”
The palpable lack of media sway highlighted how most of the press has lost any shred of credibility it may have had left in how it has covered for Biden’s declining abilities.
Remember how they denounced videos of Biden’s clear cognitive decline and called them “cheap fakes” designed to manipulate voters? How’s that narrative look now?
At Camp David over the weekend, the Biden family was reportedly furious.
Not angry with the commander-in-chief, of course, but with his debate prep team (which somehow consisted of 16 people) — as if poor preparation was the problem, rather than Biden’s mental meltdown in front of more than 50 million people in real time.
So what happens from here?
Will the Times and other publications who have called for Biden to drop out continue this drumbeat as the campaign grinds on?
Will they advocate for a candidate who wasn’t even on the primary ballot — think Gavin Newson or Gretchen Whitmer or Michelle Obama or Hillary Clinton — to advance the narrative?
If so, how will Kamala Harris, who believes the nomination should be hers if her boss goes away, react to being snubbed? What will black Democratic voters think?
Will they endorse someone even farther to the left, like a Cornell West?
Or will they just pretend their days-long freak-out never happened, as Biden remains atop the ticket?
To top off this terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week for Team Blue, the Supreme Court on Monday ruled 6-3 that Donald Trump had “absolute immunity” as president when conducting official acts.
From a macro perspective, that means most legal experts now believe there’s no way for Jack Smith’s election-interference case against Trump — the most serious and highest-profile prosecution he faces — to be tried before Election Day.
If so, the 2024 election will come down to the contrast between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, in terms of both issues and health.
For Biden and the Democrats, that isn’t a good thing.
With Election Day only 125 days away, the left is facing an absolute train wreck of its own making.
Trump leads in every swing state, and is tied or even leading in blue states like New Jersey, Minnesota, Virginia, New Hampshire, even New Mexico — none of which has gone red in two decades or more.
After everything that happened to his opponent and the party this week, Trump not only wins in November, but wins bigly.
Because ask yourself this: Does this version of Joe Biden really have a comeback in him, especially with his horrific record?
Rhetorical question.
Joe Concha is a Fox News contributor and bestselling author.